Refrigerating circuits, often called heat pumps, are being more and more widely used in systems for exploiting and utilising the heat energy contained in any heat accumulator or generator, for example the heat energy of the outside air or the hot cooling air discharged for example from areas in which machines such as computers give off heat, or the heat energy of any group of natural elements such as the water of phreatic deposits and the ground (geothermic sources) and whose thermal properties render use thereof attractive, insofar as the heat energy contained in the cooling circuit of the heat source can be employed in an installation for heating and/or air-conditioning for example industrial or private premises.
In such systems, the source is often assimilated to an indirect-use heat source by means of an exchanger, for example for heating the water of a hot water production circuit of a building, or a central heating circuit.
The present invention relates to a heat pump installation, for example of the compression type, such as those which are used alone or in combination with a supplementary boiler in such installations.
The known heat pumps, which extract heat energy from the cooling of a source of heat, and transmit the extracted heat to a working fluid which then carries the heat into the premises to be heated, are conventionally thermally coupled to the cooling circuit of the source by means of a first heat exchanger in which a cooling fluid circulated by the pump absorbs the excess heat carried by the heat-carrying fluid coming from the cooling circuit of the source, said heat being restored to the working circuit such as a central heating circuit, by means of at least one second heat exchanger. Such a heat pump of the compression type comprises a compressor assembly which transmits the cooling fluid to a condenser, for liberating the heat energy to the working circuit by way of the second heat exchanger or exchangers. At the outlet from the second heat exchanger or exchangers, the condensed cooling fluid passes into a third heat exchanger in which it gives off more heat, and then into a dehydrater in order finally to finish at an expansion means. After having passed through the expansion means, the cooling fluid is converted into the gaseous state, insofar as, in the first heat exchanger, it absorbs heat from the heat-carrying fluid circulating in the cooling circuit of the source. The cooling fluid coming from the first heat exchanger is then super-heated when it passes into the third heat exchanger, and is then transmitted to the compressor assembly.